High Shelf Esteem

Archives for October 2017

What’s Making Me Happy: October Edition

I usually immerse myself in spooky/horror entertainment during October, but this year, it’s been murder mysteries that have been making month. There are also some techie things I recently learned about that have been a godsend.

Here’s what’s been making me happy this October:

Grantchester
It’s the early 1950s and an unlikely duo of detective and vicar solve crimes in a small town near Cambridge. Toss in an impossible romance for the vicar, a gay curate, a curmudgeonly but well-intentioned housekeeper and you’re set for some dramatic and intelligent fun. It doesn’t hurt that the vicar, Sidney Chambers, is quite the looker.

Book Folding
I was looking for easy bookish crafts for my middle school book club to make for a fundraiser we’re holding for  We Need Diverse Books , and I came upon a couple book folding projects that looked pretty simple. I gave them a try and they were a total hit! I’ve been making trees and hedgehogs like crazy ever since (the folding is quite therapeutic). If you want to try making the hedgehog, click on the link to watch the tutorial I used.

My easy-to-make hedgehog and tree!

 

Libby App
Being able to check ebooks out FOR FREE from the library has always made me incredibly happy, but now, the process is even easier. Overdrive, the digital media provider used by most public libraries, has created Libby, an app that is intuitive and very simple to use. From your phone or tablet, you can easily search for ebooks and audiobooks, then download and listen to them immediately. If you have more than one library card, you can easily toggle between different library systems and it’s a snap to put items on hold. Plus, the design and interface are pretty darn cute. If you’ve put off learning how how to download digital media from the library, now is the time to give it a shot.

Deadly Manners
This podcast, produced by AMC/Sundance, harkens back to the days of radio dramas. It places the listener in the middle of a murder mystery in a snowed-in party during the mid-1950s. The mystery itself is engaging, but the star-studded cast including LeVar Burton, Kristen Bell, and Anna Chumsky, really brings the story to life. Five episodes of the planned ten have been released. I can’t wait to hear the rest!

Audible Car Mode
I am an avid Audible user. Their selection is great, the pricing is reasonable, downloading is easy, and now they’ve made their player more user friendly while driving. Just click on the car icon in the regular player, and it will make the display much larger and easier to use behind the wheel. Yay for safer driving!

 

What’s made you happy in October? Share in the comments below!

Literary Linking: October 23 – 27

This week’s link topics include: a case for reading Ulysses, Christmas dinner at Hogwarts and more!

The best bookish links the week of October 23 – 27:

Harry Potter Fans Can Eat Christmas Dinner at Hogwarts
Maybe if you ask for a trip to England for Christmas this year, you can make your travel plans for next December’s Christmas dinner.

Pablo Neruda Didn’t Die of Cancer, Experts Say. So What Killed the Poet?
It all sounds mighty fishy…

Book Recommendations Based on Your Favorite Babysitter from The Babysitters Club
My students love The Babysitters Club (both the graphic novels and the original series), but I’ll hold off on giving them these recommendations until they’re a tad older.

25 Best Movie Adaptations of Classic Children’s Books
For me, it’s a toss up between The Secret Garden and Matilda – both are so good. But then there’s the Harry Potter movies and Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. I just love them all!

Why Should You Read James Joyce’s “Ulysses”?
This TEDEd animated video makes a strong case for reading Joyce’s famously difficult novel. I might actually give it a try… when I’ve retired and have the time.

10 Books You’ll Want To Read Based on Their Intriguing Super Fun Long Titles

Top Ten Tuesday is an original blog meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week’s topic is Top 10 Unique Book Titles. This post is my variation on the theme.

It can’t be easy for an author to decide on the title of his or her book. How can you encapsulate the entirety of a story in just a few words?

The majority of fiction books have two- or three-word titles, but there are some great titles out there that break out of this traditional mold. Below is a list of 10 of my favorites. They all have at least seven words in the title and are books I’ve either read or have on my TBR.

 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer

 

 

 

 

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, by Julie Andrews Edwards

 

 

 

 

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami

 

 

 

 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Mark Haddon

 

 

 

 

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz

 

 

 

 

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson

 

 

 

 

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg

 

 

 

 

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor To a Nation, by M.T. Anderson

 

 

 

 

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Neil Gaiman

 

 

 

The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs, and Me, Ruby Oliver, by E. Lockhart

 

 

 

 

 

What are some of your favorite long book titles? Share in the comments below!

Literary Linking: October 16 – 20

This week’s article topics include: room service for books, a Harry Potter exhibit, adding words to the dictionary and more!

The best bookish links the week of October 16 – 20:

How the 25 Greatest Stories Ever Told Would Be Ruined by Technology
My personal faves: Oedipus, Lord of the Flies, and Little Women.

Literacy Builds Life Skills as Well as Language Skills
In case you didn’t get the memo… READING IS GOOD FOR KIDS.

This Is How Words Get in the Dictionary
A lexicographer explains the process of how words make the cut for the dictionary. I wonder if she can make “fetch” happen.

This Paris Hotel Is Offering a Room Service for Books
With hand-picked reading material, author-themed rooms and other awesome literary amenities, this place is the bibliophile’s dream hotel. Let me know if you want to fund a trip for me to try it out 🙂

Wizard! The Magic of Harry Potter at the British Museum
Btw, I need someone to pay for me to go to England too! But if my wishful thinking doesn’t pan out, it looks like the exhibition is coming to NYC next year.

What I’ve Been Reading: October Edition

Happy October! We’re finally getting some fall weather here in Maryland and I’m about to start reading some creepy books to get ready for Halloween. What I’ve read so far this month has been pretty eclectic, but nothing has disappointed!

Here’s what I’ve been reading:

Final Girls, by Riley Sager
Three girls, all the sole survivors of horrendous acts of violence that left many dead, have a connection with each other that no one else has. They’re Final Girls. And now many years later, one is dead under suspicious circumstances. The two remaining final girls band together, but is it for the best?

I wanted a thriller that I could tear through and Final Girls was just what I needed.

 

Auma’s Long Run, by Eucabeth A. Odhiambo
Set in Kenya in the 1980s, the story focuses on Auma, a 13-year-old girl with great aspirations. She’s hoping her talent for running will help her get scholarships to school so she can eventually become a doctor, but the future doesn’t look too bright. Everyone is dying from a new and mysterious disease: AIDS. This was one of the final books I read as a potential book to include in my fifth graders’ Newbery study, and in the end, it was just a tad too mature for their age level. I would, however, definitely recommend this to older middle schoolers. It covers a topic and culture that hasn’t been explored very much in young adult literature

 

Sourdough, by Robin Sloan
The descriptions of Sourdough sound pretty hokey: a young coder is gifted with a magical sourdough starter that opens the door to an underground tech-focused farmers market scene that changes her life. What?!? Magic bread? I was skeptical, but I am keen to read anything about food, so I gave it a shot and I absolutely devoured it (haha). Sourdough was a blend of twenty-something angst, friendly teasing of futuristic tech, and the healing (and sometimes destructive!) power of food. Be warned, though, you will have major cravings for soup and sourdough bread while you’re reading this book. I don’t even really like sourdough and I was dying for some.

 

The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion
I started listening to The Rosie Project on a Monday and finished it that Wednesday. For you audiobook listeners out there, you know this is exceedingly fast. The narrator’s Australian accent was a factor, but really, the book was just so much fun, I couldn’t stop listening! The main character, Don Tillman decides that the only way he can find a romantic partner is for women to pass his very extensive compatibility questionnaire.  But then he meets the seemingly very incompatible Rosie, but let’s just say, opposites attract… If you want an uplifting book with lots of laughs, you have to give this one a read.

 

Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything, by Anne Bogel
Learning my Myers-Briggs type was a real game-changer for me in my early twenties. I loved Anne Bogel’s concise overview of Myers-Briggs and many of the other personality frameworks, especially because she deftly uses characters from literature as examples of different personality types. The book has inspired to me to learn more about the Enneagram framework, so I’ll be tapping into the resources Anne gives at the end of Reading People.

 

Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
I really enjoyed Ng’s first book, Everything I Never Told You, but I think this one is even better! I’ll have a more in-depth review of the book in my next Worth the Read? post.

 

 

 

What have you read lately? Share in the comments below!

Literary Linking: October 9 – 13

This week’s article topics include: Dan Brown, designing book covers, a waterproof Kindle, and more!

The best bookish links the week of October 9 -13:

The World According To Dan Brown
This article actually came out a couple weeks ago, but it’s so entertaining, I had to include it. Dan Brown is a bit of a weirdo, but by golly, he can write a page-turner. If anything, just read the piece to hear about his house — it’s nuts!

On Creating a New Imprint’s First Ever Cover: Jenny Zhang’s Sour Heart
A fascinating read on the step-by-step process Rachel Ake went through when designing the cover for Sour Heart. It’s a lot more involved than most people might think. The best part is looking at the covers that didn’t make the cut.

Let’s Talk about Dr. Seuss
Thank you, Grace Lin, for your balanced and thoughtful approach to the Dr. Seuss controversies.

Amazon Is Finally Releasing a Waterproof Kindle
I’m not a really a bath-taker, but I do love reading by the pool, so a waterproof Kindle sounds fabulous!

Goodnight Moon as Read by LeVar Burton to Neil deGrasse Tyson
This is one of the cutest videos I’ve ever seen. No matter how you feel right now, you’ll feel even better once you watch

Books in the Nude…SFW, I Promise :)

Don’t worry — this post is safe for work! What I mean by “books in the nude” is simply hardback books without their dust jackets on.

I process a lot of children’s picture books at work (barcoding, labeling, covering, etc.), and in doing so, I see a lot of fun covers under the dust jacket. Sometimes they tell a little secret or add to the story. This got me wondering whether any adult books have fun “under” covers, so I headed to my home bookshelves and started undressing all my hardbacks.

Disappointingly, most adult books have plain old boring covers under their dust jackets. A few will have the publisher logo imprinted on it, others have the author’s initials, but even those are pretty rare. Out of my whole library, I only have five with anything on the cover worth noting and two of them are young adult. I guess it’s expensive to design cool covers???

In any case, I’m still glad I have a few to show for my book denuding. Here they are with jackets on and off:

Bats of the Republic, by Zachary Thomas Dodson
Bats and bats and bats! Plus contrasting front and back covers…me likey.

                    


Three Dark Crowns, by Kendare Blake
I haven’t read this one yet, so I don’t know the meaning behind the three little icons here, but the design is nice and understated for a book all about sororicide.

 

           

Men Without Women, by Haruki Murakami
A subtle puzzle piece is better than nothing.

          


I’ll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson
And this cover does give us the sun! Or at least the beams (that are VERY hard to see in this photo).

          

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
A vintage look to it, which goes along with the story’s late 19th century time period. I dig it.

         

Do you know of any adult hardbacks with cool covers under their dust jackets? If so, share in the comments below!

Literary Linking: October 2 – 6

This week’s article topics include: fun word facts, the National Book Award finalists, a 2000+ page book about bread, and more!

The best bookish links the week of October 2- 6:

2017 National Book Award Finalists
I haven’t read nearly enough of the finalists! The winners aren’t announced for another month, though, so there’s still time to do some catch-up reading.

4 Real-Life Book People Fact Check Younger
If you haven’t watched the show Younger yet, you have to check it out. A TV show about books and the publishing industry? Yes, please! And this article is great because it clarifies what aspects of the show are legit and which aren’t.

Using Science and History To Unlock the Secrets of Bread
I just finished reading Sourdough, by Robin Sloan, so bread has been on the brain. This article about Modernist Bread, a new five-volume book about bread (it’s over 2000 pages long!), makes me hungry for some carb-filled goodness.

My 150 Writing Mentors and Me
Writing is hard! But the bottom line is that you have to be stubborn and push through to get the pay off.

17 Facts About Words That Will Low-Key Blow Your Mind
If you’re a word nerd, you’ll love this list of funky word facts. My personal fave is that the single piece of confetti is called a “confetto.”

26 Facts About Libraries
John Green’s series on Mental Floss is great and this one is even better than usual because it’s about libraries 🙂

10 New Bookish Vocabulary Words To Use Today

I recently I read over my blog posts and noticed that I use a lot of the same turns of phrase and vocabulary. To remedy this and liven up my writing, I actively searched for new and interesting words relating to the literary world. Did I use Websters’s? Nope! Did I use www.dictionary.com? Negative! I used the most trustworthy and academic of all dictionaries: Urban Dictionary!

I scoured this venerable resource and a lot of the literary vocabulary words I found… well, to put it lightly…they’re not exactly “family friendly.” The un-obscene ones, however, I plan on inserting into my daily conversations and future writing. I hope you can use them too!

Here are 10 of my favorites with sample sentences:

 

bookarazzi
A bookarazzi is a book lover who excitedly takes photos of the books they read and posts them online.

If you take a look at my Instagram, it’s pretty obvious that I’m a bookarazzi!

booket list
All the books you’d like to read before you die.

Reading The Count of Monte Cristo is high on my booket list.

book-hurt
When a book renders you in a state of immense sadness and melancholy.

If you’ve ever read A Little Life, Hana Yanigahara you are well versed with the feeling of book-hurt.

literaturistic
Someone involved with literature. Like artistic, but with literature

The way that author expresses himself is so literaturistic.

read-a-licious
A book that is soo good to read that the only word to describe it is READ-A-LICIOUS

Life’s too short to read anything but read-a-licious books!

Reader’s Block
Related to Writer’s Block, this is when you cannot, for the life of you, pick up a book and read it. Sure, you may be able to read a paragraph or two, or maybe even a page, but you don’t retain anything of what you just read or have the attention span and/or will to go on.

Having reader’s block is one of most dreaded states of being.

reader’s remorse
When you read a series too fast and realize you’ll have to wait several years for the next part.

Take your time when reading the Harry Potter series; you don’t want to have reader’s remorse.

readie-bye
To go to bed to read before going to beddy-bye.

Every beddy-bye for me is readie-bye.

reader’s accent
When you pronounce words funny because you’ve never actually heard them out loud before, you just read a lot of books

Person 1: That was a great “seg-you” in the conversation
Person 2: You mean segue?
Person 1: Yeah, please excuse my reader’s accent.

novelarious
A novel that is hilarious

Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan is one of the novelarious books I’ve ever read.

 

What literary lingo do you like to use? Share in the comments below!

What’s Making Me Happy: September Edition

September has been a whirlwind of craziness, but there have been a bunch of things getting me through the trying and busy times:

Pluots/Apriums
My Trader Joe’s carries a lot of unique produce including funky fruit hybrids. When I saw pluots and apriums on the shelf together, my initial reaction was, “Aren’t those basically the same thing?” So, I HAD to buy both to try them. It turns out they do taste different. The pluot is much plummier, the aprium is more apricot-y, and, thankfully, they were both are delicious.

Atypical
Atypical is about an 18-year-old guy named Sam who is on the autism spectrum and navigating the world of school, girls and family dynamics. With a description like that, I was afraid it might be sappy and overly dramatic, but it was the complete opposite. There is drama, but it’s well-tempered with humor and realistic characters. I binge-watched this show in 2 days and cannot wait for the next season to come out.

Score: A Film Music Documentary
I loved learning the behind-the-scenes world of writing music for movies from the composers themselves in this documentary. I knew some of the most famous ones by name (Hans Zimmer, Randy Newman, Howard Shore, etc.) but it was fun hearing from lesser known composers whose music I knew from seeing the movies, but didn’t have a name or face attached to them. A real person actually wrote the music for Minions, go figure!

Let’s Do It Again
This song by reggae artist, J Boog, is sooo catchy! I’ve been in podcast- and audiobook-mode for the last year and have listened to very little music.  It was nice to find something light and fun that I actually wanted to listen to. An extra fun tidbit: I happened to be on a flight to Las Vegas with J Boog last weekend!

Love, Punctuation, and the Oxford Comma: Ep. 6 of the Annotated Podcast
Book Riot just wrapped up the first season of their Annotated podcast with an episode devoted to one of the most divisive topics in the wild and crazy world of grammar: the one and only Oxford comma! A podcast about punctuation has the potential of being incredibly dull, but show host Jeff O’Neal really brings life to this grammar debate.